Adopted August 2016; Revised Commentary 2017 and 2024.
FROM THE INTRODUCTION:
Persons with mental disorders are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. Studies suggest that anywhere from 16 to 24% of people in jails and prisons have a serious mental illness.1 This rate is three to 12 times higher than the rate of serious mental disability in the community, 2 and at least three times higher than the population in psychiatric hospitals.3 It also represents a vast increase over the incarceration rate of people with mental disability 30 years ago, when the first edition of these Standards was promulgated.4 If mental disorder is defined more broadly, to include personality disorders, the percentages involved in the criminal system skyrocket to over 50%.
The challenges for mental health systems, and for criminal justice authorities who rely on the services they provide, are enormous. Increasingly, the two systems are working collaboratively to address these challenges. Specialized, “problem solving” courts, some with a mental health focus (“mental health courts”), have proliferated in many states.16 Rather than focus exclusively on narrow psycho-legal questions like trial competence or mental non responsibility, many lawyers and clinicians, in both traditional and specialized courts, are seeking to cast a broader net and address the full range of a defendant’s needs, in the interest of “therapeutic justice.”17 Many of the standards in Part I reflect these developments, as do other recent ABA policies on diversion and holistic lawyering, which are also referenced in these Standards. More specifically, the standards in this part delineate the roles of mental health professionals, lawyers, and judges who deal with justice involved individuals with mental problems, stress the importance of interdisciplinary cooperation, and emphasize the need to ensure that all parties are properly educated about mental disorder, its effects, alternative ways of dealing with it, and each other’s competencies and ethical obligations.
THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION’S CRIMINAL JUSTICE MENTAL HEALTH STANDARDS. Full text with commentary
MEMBERS OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE MENTAL HEALTH TASK FORCE:
Christopher Slobogin, Chair and Reporter, Professor, Vanderbilt
University Law, School, Nashville, Tn.
W. Lawrence Fitch, Reporter, Professor, University of Maryland School
of Law, Baltimore, Md.
Guy Arcidiacono, Deputy Chief, Appeals Bureau, Forensic Litigation
Unit, Suffolk County, N.Y.
Richard Bonnie, Professor, University of Virginia Law School,
Charlottesville, Va.
Alex Buchanan, Ph.D., M.D., FRCPsych, Associate Professor of Law &
Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Richard Burr, Defense Attorney, Houston, Tex.
Kirk Heilbrun, Ph.D., Professor, Drexel University, Phil., Pa.
Steven K. Hoge, M.D., Director, Columbia-Cornell Forensic Psychiatry
Fellowship Program, Clinical Professor, Columbia University
College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York State Psychiatric
Inst.
William F. Klumpp, Jr., Office of Attorney General, St. Paul, Minn.
Steve Leifman, Judge, Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida, Miami, Fl.
Virginia Murphrey, Chief Public Defender, 10th Judicial Circuit, Anoka,
Minn.
Randy Otto, Ph.D., Florida Mental Health Institute, Tampa, Fl.
Liaisons
Nina Ginsberg, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
Ron Honberg, National Alliance on Mental Illness
Gwynn X. Kinsey, Jr., Deputy Chief, Capital Case Unit, Department of
Justice
A.J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender, Washington, D.C.
E. Gerry Morris, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers